Advertising has quickly become a predominant aspect within computer networks (e.g., Intranets, the Internet) and the WWW. The nature of computer networks has created an environment where computer users (i.e. “clients”) can readily access corporate, product, service, public relation and other types of marketing and/or promotional content. Conventionally known as “on-line” advertising, many advertisers have developed systems to allow clients to view and access advertisement material and similar posts on their home computers and web browsers.
Typically, delivery systems that bring advertisements on the Internet are referred to as “banners” on a web page. These banner ads can have text, as well as various still-image and/or animated graphics. The banners are often presented as a Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) link, in order to direct clients to a specified page, or a location in an TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) location. The banners can be embedded in, or otherwise accompany, a web page when it is displayed to the client.
Since a majority of advertisements on the WWW today are not dynamic, many of the advantages of on-line advertising are lost. Non-dynamic systems do not allow advertisements to be focused to particular types of clients with particular interests. Instead, banners are typically associated with one or more web pages that contain content that is previously known by the advertiser as being relevant to the subject matter of the advertisement. While advertisers may reach clients through individual web sites, it is very difficult for advertisers to focus their advertisements to virtual “communities” or grouped consumers.
Since computer network systems (i.e., the Internet, WWW) have such a vast potential for allowing advertisers to reach clients/consumers, attempts have been made to “personalize” advertisements in order to target banners to particular clients. Specifically, clients can “pre-register” for advertising services, where the client's specific interests are manually inserted into a user profile. Clients then can be assigned a member ID, which becomes the destination point for subsequent advertisements. Other techniques to target advertisements involve tracking client activity in relation to the advertisement, i.e., logging the number of times a client has accessed an advertisement.
Under the present advertising models and systems, there does not exist a way to efficiently link clients with content providers, while targeting advertisements to those clients. Furthermore, under existing models and systems, the compensation systems that are implemented do not work to provide readily accessible sources of revenue to content providers on the WWW.
Furthermore, the use of trusted agents, or “hosts”, has been limited to date. While hosts have been used for purchasing/accounting and WWW navigation, they have not been utilized to efficiently deliver advertisements and information to clients accessing provider content. The existing hosts have also had minimal functionality incorporated in them as well. Current hosts do not incorporate themselves into an advertising and compensation model that provides universal functions for advertisement and information delivery. Furthermore, there is a need to integrate functions to a host that allow clients to integrate services like technical assistance and customer service into their browsing sessions.